HYDERABAD l wednesday l june 10, 2026 l `9.00 l PAGES 16 l LATE CITY EDITION Pay less foR domestic Air India flights if you opting out of food Air India said Tuesday it is mulling a proposal to offer cheaper flight tickets for flyers who opt out of food or snacks while booking a domestic flight a fully optional service, says carrier Unlike other airlines, Air India has always included complimentary meals in all its domestic flights. An Air India source said, “This will be a fully optional service. The move will reduce the fares by `500 to `600 for Economy class. It will not be introduced for Premium Economy or Business class.” The free beverage (coffee/water) served to all flyers will continue ■ 27% eyeing to get back competitive edge ■ The move will initially be introduced on a pilot basis on routes including Delhi-Amritsar, Delhi-Chandigarh and B’luru-Hyderabad Another Air India source said the move is meant to make the carrier competitive. “Price-conscious passengers choose our competitor as their fares are lesser. If our fares reduce a bit, we get back our edge.” of india’s domestic aviation market is commanded by air india CHENNAI ■ MADURAI ■ VIJAYAWADA ■ BENGALURU ■ KOCHI ■ HYDERABAD ■ VISAKHAPATNAM ■ COIMBATORE ■ KOZHIKODE ■ THIRUVANANTHAPURAM ■ BELAGAVI ■ BHUBANESWAR ■ SHIVAMOgGA ■ MANGALURU ■ TIRUPATI ■ TIRUCHY ■ TIRUNELVELI ■ SAMBALPUR ■ HUBBALLI ■ DHARMAPURI ■ KOTTAYAM ■ KANNUR ■ VILLUPURAM ■ KOLLAM ■ TADEPALLIGUDEM ■ NAGAPATTINAM ■ THRISSUR ■ KALABURAGI Resource crunch A CID team raiding Abhishek Banerjee’s office; and Mamata Banerjee leaves Sonia Gandhi’s house in Delhi | PTI/parveen negi CID raids Mamata’s office amid meeting with Sonia Buzz over Didi seeking INDIA bloc help to contest Basirhat LS bypoll p r ee t h a n a i r & s u b h e n d u m a i t i @ New Delhi/Kolkata TRINAMOOL Congress chief Mamata Banerjee held closeddoor talks with senior Congress leader Sonia Gandhi at her 10, Janpath residence on Tuesday even as CID teams in Kolkata raided TMC offices at her Kalighat residence and Camac Street. The meeting followed Sonia and Mamata’s warm hug at the Opposition INDIA bloc’s meeting the previous day . Just a day earlier, leaders of 23 Opposition parties vowed unity and better coordination among the alliance partners. According to sources, Rahul Gandhi told the Opposition meeting that if TMC and Congress had tied up in the West Bengal election, the results would have been different. Sources said Mamata and Sonia discussed the strategy between the two parties going forward. This was their first closed-door meeting after Trinamool’s defeat in the polls, and alleged attacks on party workers and MP Abhishek Banerjee after the elections. The meeting also comes amid speculation that Mamata is seeking the help of Congress and the INDIA bloc to contest a byelection from Basirhat Lok Sabha seat which fell vacant after the death of TMC MP Haji Nurul Islam. A rebellion within the TMC, with as many as 20 MPs deciding to form a separate group and align with the ruling NDA, has added to Mamata’s troubles. A majority of Trinamool’s 80 MLAs have already formed a separate group led by Ritabrata Banerjee. The timing of the raids on TMC offices as Mamata sat with Sonia led to an uproar from TMC leaders. TMC joint secretary Derek O’Brien called it “political vendetta, shamelessly timed.” CID teams swept into TMC offices in Kolkata to probe allegations of forged signatures of party MLAs in connection with the election of Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay as Leader of the Opposition in Bengal. A CID team was stopped from entering Mamata’s house-cumoffice by former MP Subhashis Chakraborty After waiting out. side for about 40 minutes, they managed to enter the office. Abhishek Banerjee, Mamata’s nephew and TMC national general secretary, was also in Delhi and missed a 5 pm deadline to appear before the CID. Signature probe CID officers in Kolkata said the raids were held to dredge out the original copy of TMC’s resolution book and attendance sheet containing signatures of 70 MLAs present at the May 6 meeting held at the party office No morality: TMC Trinamool Congress leaders Kalyan Banerjee and Kirti Azad accused dissident MPs of lacking political morality and deserting the party. Alleging a broader attempt to weaken opposition parties, Banerjee said, “They are destroying democracy” Meenakshi’s papers for RS rejected, CM says ‘seat chori’ E n s @ Hyderabad/Bhopal In a setback to the Congress ahead of the June 18 elections for the Rajya Sabha in Madhya Pradesh, the nomination of Telangana Congress in-charge Meenakshi Natarajan was rejected during scrutiny of papers on Tuesday . Describing the development as “seat chori”, Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy said that the rejection of Natarajan’s nomination was a BJP conspiracy. He said: “I condemn this conspiracy by the BJP in Madhya Pradesh which resulted in the rejection of Meenakshi Natarajan’s Rajya Sabha nomination. After Vote Chori and SIR, they are now resorting to Seat Chori. This is an assault on democracy The peo. ple’s voices are being stifled. This is a dark day for Indian democracy This needs to be con. demned by all citizens. We will fight for justice.” The rejection by Returning Officer Arvind Sharma clears the way for the unopposed election of the BJP’s third candidate, Mahesh Kewat. Report on p8 Big push to asset, land monetisation and disinvestment D i pa k M o n d a l a n d P u s h p i ta De y @ New Delhi With the Centre facing a significant resource crunch following a series of emergency measures to shield the economy from the West Asia crisis, the government has activated plans to mobilise additional revenue, official sources said on Tuesday. The measures include aggressively pursuing asset and land monetisation while also stepping up efforts to raise funds through disinvestment. Sources said senior government officials are holding weekly meetings with the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM) and the Department of Public Enterprises (DPE) to explore more avenues for resource mobilisation. The government hopes DIPAM would exceed the Budget target of `80,000 crore from disinvestment in FY27. One official said the proposed strategic sale of IDBI Bank, which had been put on hold due to valuation concerns and lack of investor interest, is likely to be revived. The government has set a target of `10 lakh crore in asset monetisation during the five-year period from FY26 to FY30 under the National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP) 2.0. Under NMP 1.0, it achieved nearly 90% of its `6 lakh crore target. At the same time, the Centre is accelerating the monetisation of idle and non-core public assets through the National Land Monetisation Corporation (NLMC). According to the DPE, approvals were received during FY26 for monetisation of assets valued around `10,048 crore. The government’s fiscal burden has risen sharply following a series of support measures announced in recent weeks. It has created a `1 lakh crore Economic Stabilisation Fund to build fiscal buffers and respond to emergencies such as supplychain disruptions and sectoral shocks. Of this, `10,000 crore has been allocated for oil marketing firms to stabilise aviation turbine fuel prices. The government has also launched a fresh Emergency Credit Line Guarantee Scheme (ECLGS) with an outlay of `18,000 crore to support MSMEs and the aviation sector. In addition, it has approved the creation of the Bharat Maritime Insurance Pool with a sovereign guarantee of `12,980 crore. E x p r e s s Ne w s Se r v i c e @ Hyderabad Accusing Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy of spreading falsehoods, resorting to personal attacks and attempting to divert attention from his failures, Union Minister G Kishan Reddy on Tuesday challenged the former to an open debate on its Gukesh and the burden of being world champ D GUKESH, the youngest undisputed world chess champion in history, has admitted that managing expectations has been one of the hardest things as world champion. “ much as you try to switch As off, you are still aware that there is this kind of elephant in the room,” he told a few Indian journalists after Norway Chess. “Like you are expected and also you expect something. I’m in general also an ambitious player and I keep going for wins. Considering these, it has been pretty hard. But, okay, I either break from it or grow through it.” In one of the most candid conversations by an Indian sportsperson, the 20-year-old said he had struggled for motivation during “parts of 2025”. “You can still do everything that you’ve been doing,” he said. “But the reason why you’re doing it is different. You’re not waking up striving for the World Championship. But it doesn’t mean you have to lose motivation. There was obviously some, probably in parts of 2025, there was some motivation issues. But if you really love the sport, if you’re able to connect back to it, that’s why people keep saying, ‘find the reason why you started playing the sport’. I feel like external resources can never, they’re not reliable sources of motivation for a very long time. So, something that drives you from within, that’s some- The govt hopes for a windfall from the favourable SC ruling in the GST dispute involving online gaming companies. Officials estimate that tax demands of around `1.5 lakh crore are under litigation Sops to adversely hit revenue The `10 per litre excise duty cut on fuel and the tax waiver for FIIs in govt securities is expected to adversely impact revenue. The excise duty reduction alone could result in a revenue loss of around `1.23 lakh crore delimitation bill Spl session possible if govt has the numbers RA J E SH KUMAR THAKUR @ New Delhi The ruling NDA government is open to reworking the delimitation bill to specify upfront that Lok Sabha seats across all states would be uniformly raised by 50%, if it were to muster two-thirds majority for the passage of the legislation. It could even call a special session of Parliament — ahead of the Monsoon session, which is slated to begin in the second week of July — if it is confident of the numbers game. An oral assurance on the 50% formula was made by Union home minister Amit Shah during the previous session of Parliament, but the Opposition was not convinced and the bill was defeated in the Lok Sabha on April 17. “If we get the required majority in the House, we would convey the special session of Parliament to pass the delimitation bill,” a senior BJP leader said. The proposed legislation is otherwise sound and the legal framework would remain intact, the leader added. “A uniform 50% increase would raise the LS seat count from 543 to about 815. So, the current cap of 550 seats was raised to 850,” a top source said. When the bill fell on April 17, the NDA was short of 54 votes — 298 ayes against the required 352 — out of 528 members present and voting. It already has 20 TMC rebels in the bag and is scouting for more, including from the South. Kishan counters Revanth with a challenge candid interaction s w a r o o p s w a m i n at h a n Gaming verdict windfall thing that I’ve been trying to connect with.” He vowed to keep fighting because ‘I don’t know what else I would want to spend the day with’. “Chess is something, even though I’m playing badly , it’s still something that I want to spend time with. To do something badly for a long time... if you don’t have any kind of love for the game, there’s no reason to continue. But just the fact that I’m trying so hard, means that there is something behind all of this. Just connecting with it, I think is the reason that I want to keep going.” unfulfilled election promises and governance record. Stating that his contribution to Telangana’s development was known to the people, Kishan challenged Revanth to appoint a committee of senior journalists to examine allegations that he had obstructed any development project. He said he was prepared to resign if any such evidence emerged. Addressing reporters in New Delhi, Kishan referred to Revanth’s remarks that he would not allow him to function or move freely in Telangana by saying that he had faced many chief ministers during his political career and had emerged through public movements and struggles.  continued on p4 Heavy Rain submerges hyd, leaves 2 dead|p2 ACB raids on R&B EnC yield `200 cr E x p r e s s Ne w s Se r v i c e @ Hyderabad An Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) search operation against a senior Roads & Buildings department official has unearthed assets whose market value is estimated at around `200 crore. Simultaneous raids conducted on Tuesday at 16 locations linked to R&B Engineer-inChief (EnC) Mohan Naik Jarupla, including properties belonging to relatives, associates and alleged benamidars, revealed a vast network of assets ranging from prime real estate and agricultural land to cash, gold and bank deposits. According to the ACB, assets Jewellery and valuables seized from senior R&B Engineer-in-Chief Mohan Naik Jarupla (right) by the ACB, in Hyderabad on Tuesday identified so far have an official value of about `17.95 crore. However, their market value is estimated at nearly `200 crore. Officials said scrutiny of financial transactions and verification of additional properties are still underway and the , final valuation could rise further.  continued on p5